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PARTISAN REVIEW
recent performances of
Accumulation
(1971)
With Talking (1973)
Plus Uiztermotor
(1978), language functions so as to prevent the
viewer from experiencing the dance as a perpetually re-created
present. Brown 's verbal narration consists of two alternating but
otherwise chronological stories. In order to establish the proper nar–
rative context for each fragment, we have to remember precisely
where her storytelling left off prior to the interruption . By forcing us
to concentrate on an earlier moment while watching the dance
unfold in time, Brown prevents us from lavishing all our attention
on the fleeting present. We might say that our relationship to the
dance has been "historicized."
This leads us to another essential distinction between modern
and postmodern dance. The pre-Cunningham moderns prided
themselves on having broken completely with history and tradition.
Rather than utilizing the inherited and impersonal movement
vocabulary of the academic ballet, the early moderns tried to work
entirely from within their own bodies, giving form to their own sub–
jective ways of moving. Doris Humphrey spoke of "moving from
the inside ou t. "
But many of the postmodern choreographers exhibit what Eliot
called "the historical sense"; they readily acknowledge that they
have been profoundly influenced in positive ways by other choreog–
raphers. Rather than deceiving themselves into believing that it's
possible to be wholly original (or simply to work entirely from within
the self) at this late date in the twentieth century, many postmodern
choreographers proceed from a consciousness of the past. Senta
Driver, whose work is rich in allusions to dance history, defends this
practice by claiming:
I can't start naive . Some people can. People like Kei Takei, and I
think, Martha Graham in the beginning worked just out of what
they believed was necessary. But I can't go back to 1930. I know
too much about what happened after. I am an inheritor.
At the end of the spoken text for Twyla Tharp's
The Bix Pieces
(1971), the narrator asks, "Can anything be new, original, private?
October 9th. Today I thought I'd write a dance to the 'Goldberg
Variations,' just because it's already been done."
David Gordon, who is also fond of "quoting" older dances,
says:
